


Warm Hearts

by Saaron



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/M, Fankids - Freeform, secret anna
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:40:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21933868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saaron/pseuds/Saaron
Summary: Nine years after the war, Dimitri, Byleth and their family leave the capital for a little holiday vacation.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 6
Kudos: 36





	Warm Hearts

Byleth looked at the vapor coming out of her mouth as she breathed through the open window. She didn’t change much since the war, her hair was still wavy, just slightly shorter and it was as if the 9 years that had passed didn’t affect her face at all. She was wearing dark blue pants and a grey shirt, with a long, heavy fur cloak on top of it.

“Would you please close that window? You’re letting in all the cold air. It’s… deterring me from starting that fire.”

She turned to look at her husband, Dimitri, trying to light the fireplace. The old stone country house, one of the most precious estates of the Royal Family of Faerghus, could get pretty cold, especially as it was standing a bit further north from the capital.

Since the end of the war and their wedding, Dimitri had started to take care of himself again. While his hair was still long, it was a lot less messy, and little streaks of grey hair started appearing. He was wearing it in a tight ponytail, with only a few strands of hair loose on his forehead, slightly obscuring his eyepatch. He was wearing a heavy black and grey fur coat, with a white shirt underneath and tight black pants.

“I know… you want to keep an eye on them… but warming up the place is useless if we’re going to keep the windows open and let all the snow in, don’t you think?”

Byleth smiled, nodding, before closing the window. She was not going to waste his efforts like that.

Still, she was worried and couldn’t help but look outside, watching their two daughters playing together in the snow. The oldest one, Alexia, a frail, little blonde girl with shoulder-length hair, wearing a white fur jacket and a blue dress with a pink ribbon, was preparing a snowball as her sister, Natalia snuck up on her, her long black jacket flowing as she moved swiftly. Her long hair was fashioned into two braids falling on her back as she raised her hands, lifting a huge snowball, ready to slam it on her sister’s head.

Even if the snowball fights in this family could get pretty… heated, it was not what Byleth was currently worrying about. The couple too often discussed what happened during the war and the 5 years that preceded it. They knew that both of them had done terrible things, unforgivable things. A lot of people could want to hurt them or the ones they loved, even after all these years. That is why they were never truly far from their daughters. They feared leaving them alone for too long because the worst could happen in mere seconds…

However…

No one knew where the king and his family were staying for the week, except for the most reliable knights and some of the servants who had been working for the royal family for decades. As far as most people were aware, they were still at the castle in the capital.

For a full week, they could rest, and enjoy some time together, away from their usual troubles. Byleth knew it, but it was hard to shake off these worries. Her gaze didn’t leave her two daughters who were now rolling in the snow together.

“That’s it! I did it!” Dimitri said, almost surprised, as he finally got the fire to start. “This place should warm up in no time!” he said, rubbing his hands in front of the fireplace. He had been trying for a while, and the new queen was extremely proud of him. So proud that she decided she wouldn’t tell him what she had been trying to say ever since he began working on that fire. She could have just used the spell Fire on the logs.

The door burst open to a sobbing Alexia, quickly followed by a crying Natalia. Byleth, worried, ran up to them.

“What happened?”

“Na… Natalia pushed my… my face right into our snowman for… no… no reason…” uttered Alexia, in between sobs.

“She pushed your face into the snowman?” asked Byleth, furrowing her eyebrows.

“LIAR!” said Natalia, her eyes wide open, “You grabbed me by the back of the head and slammed a snowball in my face after we called a truce!”

Alexia laughed mischievously.

“Hehe, maybe I did that, yes,” she answered, after she suddenly stopped crying.

“Alright, I’ve heard enough of this. I think it’s time you girls to take a nap,” said Dimitri, strictly. Natalia was about to protest when she got a little hit in the ribs from her sister’s elbow. Their father, towering over them, was full of authority, and they both knew it wasn’t the best idea to try and go against him directly.

“I’ve started a fire,” said Dimitri, proudly. “I’ll go fetch some blankets for you, we can all rest here for the time being.”

As Dimitri left the room the two sisters sat down in front of the fire, close to each other.

“Please don’t get too near the fire!” said Byleth before pausing, watching Alexia raising her hands in front of it “… And no Blizzard.”

Alexia slowly dropped her hands back on her knees, disappointed.

When their father’s loud steps were heard through the walls of the castle, Natalia jumped to her feet and ran towards a long couch, screaming “I’m taking the bigger one!”

Alexia didn’t even have the time to react that her sister was already lying on the couch, and she grumpily resolved to lie, curled up on herself, on a tinier couch, which was, at least, closer to the fire.  
Dimitri entered the room, dropping a heavy brown blanket on Alexia and another one, a white one, on Natalia. The two girls rolled up inside them and closed their eyes almost immediately. He then gave a final, big grey one to his wife, sat down next to her and the two of them started holding hands, cuddling while looking at the fire and at their daughters’ breathing getting increasingly slower as they fell asleep.

“It’s good to see them being calm like this from time to time,” whispered Dimitri in Byleth’s ear. She let out a soft chuckle before she started looking out the window again.

It had started snowing. She had never seen that much snow before since she had never been that far up north. After a few minutes, Dimitri, who was still looking at the fire pensively, finally noticed his wife’s curiosity. For a second, seeing her looking at the window this way reminded him of a happier Patricia. One who lived a fulfilling life. Just like he used to watch his stepmother looking outside the window, knitting, lost in thoughts, he watched Byleth looking at the snowflakes slowly falling like feathers, her mouth slightly curled into a smile. He bit his lower lip, knowing he was about to risk his spot in the warmth of the room. He whispered:

“Would you like to…”

Byleth silently jumped to her feet, smiling, “Yes!” She then extended her hand to her husband, grabbing the blanket in her other hand.

Dimitri laughed, closing his eye and, reaching for her hand, he got up and both left the warm living room, walking through the increasingly colder hallways of the country house, before going through the door and taking a few steps on the snow.

Once again, Byleth looked at the fog, the result of the warmth of her breath and the coldness of the outside world. Squeezing her husband’s hand, she looked up, watching the snowflakes swirling all around them. Dimitri, who was more used to this view, still could sense that this moment was unlike any others. He could feel Byleth’s hand and its warmth spreading throughout his left arm, and it felt as if her warmth was reaching directly into his heart. When he felt her hand squeezing his own, he couldn’t help but let a smile appear on his face. With her, it was as if the past never happened. The last 9 years, the 5 years before that, everything that happened before, it had disappeared. At that exact, perfect moment, he was happy, and nothing else mattered. Just a few moments ago, ghosts like the image of his stepmother came back to torment him, but right now, he was truly all alone with his wife and he knew is daughters were close, safe inside. Dimitri let go of her hand, grabbed the blanket with both hands and hugged Byleth from behind, holding it around them both. He kissed her on the cheek before placing his chin on her head, and the two of them stood there looking at the snow falling.  
After a while, the two of them sat down on the stone stairs leading to the porch. Dimitri carefully – as carefully as he was able to, at least – dropped the blanket on the stairs to avoid sitting on the cold surface. Both sat down and, close to each other, they were still able to extend it around their shoulders. Their little fur cocoon warmed up quickly thanks to their body heat. Dimitri finally broke the silence.

“I’m glad we get to see the snow falling like this.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Things could have been way different. Imagine you had decided to teach the Golden Deer? Or…” he shivered at that thought, but both of them decided to blame it on the cold, neither of them wanted to even muse with that idea.

“Fate brought us together!” she said, “If I joined the Blue Lions, if we both survived during those five years, it’s because it was meant to be.” In the past, Byleth didn’t believe in fate, but after discovering her origins, how from the beginning the Goddess was with her, she couldn’t help but believe that the Goddess herself was fate. She thanked her daily for bringing her close to Dimitri.

“I like to think that we, as humans, make our own fate… That if we’re together now, it’s thanks to our own decisions, to our actions and those of the people around us.” He paused. “Good or bad.”

“Yes! Fate is just the little push. It wouldn’t be snowing right now if fate had decided otherwise. And without snow…”

“We wouldn’t be sitting here, keeping each other warm, and enjoying this snowy landscape. I can see your point now.” He chortled.

“I wish this week could last forever.”

“I wish for it too,” he said, before kissing her on the lips, “I’m especially looking forward to the face Alexia and Natalia will make when they’ll open their gifts.”

A smile drew on Byleth’s face, imagining her daughters getting all excited and running around with their new outfits and the books they had been begging for in the past few weeks.

Suddenly, Dimitri jumped to his feet after feeling something cold hitting him in the back of the head.

“We’re under attack!” he screamed.

Byleth immediately turned to look at their daughters on the porch, a pyramid of snowballs in-between them. Natalia, holding one in each hand, was standing to the right of the pile and screamed “We’re under attack!” in a deep voice, mimicking her father’s, who turned red out of embarrassment.

“This wasn’t fair!” he exclaimed, his voice slightly cracking.

Alexia had a smirk on her face with a snowball hovering above her left hand thanks to her magic. “This one isn’t either!”

The two girls started throwing snowballs at the same time, Natalia picking them up and throwing them as fast and strongly as she could, while Alexia was using her magic to propel them in the air with her left hand, while she used the right one to magically prepare the next one.

Byleth avoided as many snowballs as possible, rolling in the snow to avoid the projectiles. She couldn’t avoid everything, however. As she was getting up, she grabbed some snow, making a snowball to throw at her daughters. Simultaneously, Dimitri was walking towards their daughters, using his heavy fur coat as a shield against the snowy weapons.

“Nana! We’re running out of ammunition!”

“We need to make some more, hurry!”

The two princesses immediately split up to gather more snow on the porch. However, as soon as the King heard his daughters’ attempt to gather more snow, he dashed towards them, ready to playfully grab them under his arms and let the three of them fall in the heavy layer of snow. However, Alexia interfered with his plans. As soon as Natalia saw her father getting closer, she screamed for help and Alexia, reacted almost immediately. She casted a variant of Blizzard on her father’s path, covering it with ice.

Dimitri didn’t act quickly enough and couldn’t stop running on time. He slipped on the thin layer of ice and fell on his back, letting out a little groan of pain.

Natalia ran up to her father, hands behind her back. She smiled at him as he was laying on the ground, asking him if he was okay. He raised his hand, hoping to receive her help to get up. She grabbed his hand and, as she was pulling him up, she said:

“Right where I want you!”

It was too late for him to react, as he was half-way up on his feet again, he noticed the snow that her daughter had in her free hand that she was raising vertically towards him, and he couldn’t stop his movement now. He could only watch her hand, knowing that the inevitable was about to happen. 

His face planted right into the snow. 

However, he didn’t let go of her hand. He purposefully lost balance, falling on his back. Due to their size and weight difference, it was impossible for Natalia to stay up, and the girl started falling with him. Before they hit the ground though, Dimitri hugged his daughter tight, making sure that she wouldn’t get hurt in the fall. The two laughed as he gently pushed her off of him and into the snow.  
Byleth was looking at them, chuckling. However, her laughter was interrupted by a magically enhanced snowball thrown at her face. Hearing her daughter whispering the spell, she dodged out of its way and threw her own at her daughter, but Alexia avoided it too, falling on her knees, as it exploded onto the wall behind her.

She got up, raising her hands above the snow. A dozen snowballs started hovering around her. She smiled at her mother, saying:

“Let’s see you dodge this!”

Alexia extended her hands forward, and all the snowballs were thrown immediately towards Byleth, who dodged as many as possible but still took a few hits. The Queen ran towards her daughter, avoiding the iced ground that she created in her way, and jumped over the porch’s wooden fence to get to her daughter. Using magic, the princess quickly made up a snow lance which she raised above her head. The fake lance clashed and broke against Byleth’s chest, who fell to her knee, pretending that it had pierced through her flesh. She fell to the ground.

“This battle is over,” whispered Alexia, before falling to her knees and letting her torso fall onto her mother’s stomach, as the two of them smiled gleefully.

“That was fun!” said Natalia, getting up.

“It was, for you,” answered Dimitri, looking at the ground while he let his hair loose and shook his head to remove all the snow from it. “Let’s try this again, but this time…” he paused, slightly raising his gaze, “But this time, we will all fight fair.” Afterward, he started laughing maniacally in a low, scary voice.

“Uh-oh,” whispered Alexia as she quickly got up, looking at her mother who was cracking her neck, a smirk on her face.

“Lelex… RUN!” screamed Natalia as she dashed towards the back of the house. Alexia took a few seconds to react, but when it hit her, she started running almost as fast as her sister to hide in the frozen gardens of the country house.

When the princesses were out of sight, Dimitri’s laughter slowly transformed into a lighter, hearty one as he approached Byleth.

“Shall we?” he asked, extending his hand towards her.

“I’ll catch up with you in a second!” she answered, still grabbing his hand to get the help she needed to get up.

Dimitri smiled at her, before he started running after his daughters, a snowball in hand, following their footsteps in the snow.

As she saw one of her daughters running to the other side of a leafless hedge, playfully screaming, Byleth couldn’t help but giggle. She eventually prepared a snowball and started running towards her daughter who was clearly not a stealth expert. This was the perfect opportunity to catch her in a pincer.

Regardless of the cold, the past and the disagreements they might have from time to time, at that precise moment, this whole family felt happy and they all wished every day could be like this one.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written for the 2019 FE Compendium's Secret Anna! My prompt was about Dimitri and Byleth celebrating snow after the war, and it was a plus if fankids were involved haha!  
> Once again, happy holidays Ophelia!  
> Thank you to Psi Yoshi for proofreading it and for your feedback on it!


End file.
